Construct Validity of the Frenchay Activities Index for Community-Dwelling Elderly in Japan

Construct Validity of the Frenchay Activities Index for Community-Dwelling Elderly in Japan

CHANG-WAN HAN,^1,2 YUKI YAJIMA,³ KAZUO NAKAJIMA,⁴ EUN-JOO LEE,² MAKIKO MEGURO⁵ and MASAHIRO KOHZUKI¹

¹Department of Internal Medicine and Rehabilitation Science, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan, ²School of Health and Welfare, Woosong University, Deajeon, Korea, ³Department of Public Health, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine and Dentistry, Japan, ⁴Department of Health and Welfare Science, Okayama Prefectural University, Japan, and ⁵Division of Physiological Medicine, St. George's Hospital Medical School, Cranmer Terrance, London, UK

Many researchers have developed various measures to evaluate the functional status of community-dwelling elderly. The Frenchay Activities Index (FAI) was developed to measure instrumental activities of daily living in stroke populations. The FAI has undergone the most intensive evaluation, but its factor structure has not been examined in Japan. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the construct validity of the FAI for non-stroke community-dwelling elderly in Japan. The study subjects were 1,323 randomly selected community older residents in Hojo city, Ehime prefecture, the southern part of Japan. In order to investigate the construct validation, we performed factor analyses, i.e., exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Furthermore, we examined the influences of age and gender on the FAI constructs. In the results, the FAI had a two-factor structure consisting of domestic chores, including washing clothes and preparing meals, and work and leisure, including gardening, driving and outings. Younger age was significantly related to increased performance on both factors. In addition, relative to females, males had a lower performance on the domestic chores and a greater performance on the work and leisure. These results suggest that the FAI satisfies the construct validity in the Japanese community-dwelling elderly. The FAI and its two factors provide important and clinically valuable information for understanding the patterns of functional status in the Japanese community-dwelling elderly.

keywords —— Frenchay Activities Index; activities of daily living; disability; rehabilitation; elderly

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Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2006, 210, 99-107

Correspondence: Masahiro Kohzuki, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Internal Medicine and Rehabilitation Science, Tohoku University, Graduate School of Medicine, 1-1 Seiryo-machi, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8574, Japan.

e-mail: kohzuki@mail.tains.tohoku.ac.jp